Retired Firefighter Aids in Haiti Relief

Sailors deliver an injured American citizen to USS Carl Vinson’s (CVN 70) Health Services department for medical care. USS Carl Vinson and Carrier Air Wing 17 are conducting humanitarian and disaster relief operations in Haiti in response to the recent

The Eagle Tribune via YellowBrix

January 29, 2010

“We’d go to a camp and there would be hundreds of (kids),” he said. “You thought you had enough supplies and you’d get halfway through, and it’d be empty.”

Covey said people on the street were bartering to try and get food and water. Children walked around barefoot and in pajamas. He saw some Haitians with large sticks and then realized they were using them to build shelter.

“People would take four of these sticks and five bedsheets and make a house,” he said.

Covey did not see any rioting among the people he visited. When Haitians saw relief workers, they always smiled, he said.

“The people, for as little as they have, they just keep going,” he said. “They’re very persevering.”

But the earthquake has taken its toll. He said mothers would bring him their children, saying there was something wrong with their eyes. Covey would examine them, but said he could never find anything medically wrong.

“They had this dead look to them,” he said. “Like they had no hope.”

Covey plans to head back to Haiti next month, and wants to return every one or two months as the country continues to recover.

“We’re going to concentrate on one little area,” he said. “In the grand scheme of things, three people can’t make much of an impact. In one little area, I think we did.”